The American West - First Season

From the ashes of the Civil War,

a new breed of American emerges...

determined to grab a piece

of the nation's untamed frontier.

Life was tough certainly after the Civil War.

And you had this vast continent that was unexplored.

And I think that fostered a big migration to the West.

Over the course of 30 years,

more than 430 million acres of land

will be settled.

But as the US government pushes the nation west,

former Confederates hell-bent on taking back

what they lost become outlaws...

We intend to rob this here bank.

Who's the cashier?

...threatening to reignite the Civil War.

In that day, you had to be somewhat of a bad guy to survive.

They were all tough and nobody lived very long.

On the plains, war breaks out

as tribes of warriors band together

to protect their way of life.

We deploy Custer and 1,200 men to track down

whatever remains of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull's war party.

If necessary, wipe them out.

This is the story

of an age of violence like no other,

a time when blood is shed and battles fought

by ordinary men who become legends...

...as they fight to determine the fate of the country.

The West shaped this country in ways

that people either don't acknowledge or have taken for granted

or have simply forgotten.

The West was true freedom.

It was such a defining characteristic of America.

This is "The American West."

You go to hell.

You first.

The story of the West begins at the end

of the Civil War...

where a young man named Jesse James

is a soldier in a fringe military group

known as Quantrill's Raiders.

Quantrill's Raiders were guerilla fighters

fighting for the South.

They didn't necessarily fight in traditional ways,

and the way they fought could often be very savage, very violent,

and their targets could be civilians as well as military.

We got to go! We got to go!

There they go! Come on!

Get him!

- Can you run? - No.

In the spring of 1865,

Jesse James is shot and captured

by the Union Army.

Now, say it.

I solemnly swear...

That I will bear the true allegiance

of the United States.

Say it.

I will bear true allegiance to the United States.

And discourage...

Jesse James is forced to pledge allegiance

to the Union.

Before he's released, the Confederacy surrenders

and after four years of bloody fighting,

the Civil War comes to an end.

After surviving a near fatal wound,

Jesse James returns home to Missouri

only to find death and destruction all around.

After the Civil War, the South was hellacious.

It had been ruined.

And there was a great deal of resentment

of northern authority, of federal authority.

There were a lot of people who were mentally unbalanced

by that war, by the brutality of it.

In the border state of Missouri,

the fighting has been especially brutal.

Missouri is one of the states

that stuck with the Union during the Civil War,

but had large sectors of the population

that wanted to go with the South in the first place.

So you had Missourians fighting Missourians.

It's in this incredibly volatile,

literally brother against brother world

that we get Jesse James.

Jesse soon discovers that the war

has not only torn apart his homeland,

it's left his family with nothing.

You look good, Frank.

You look like shit.

I bet you gave them Union boys hell, though, didn't you?

It's just real nice to be home.

Mom, I promise you,

we're gonna get back on our feet.

Me and Frank will figure out something.

Jesse and his brother Frank

grew up in rural Missouri.

Their father had gone off to the gold fields

during the Gold Rush and had died there.

Jesse's mother, Zerelda James, was a single parent,

and I think that created a very, very strong bond

between her and her children.

Still reeling from his time in battle,

Jesse knows he has to find a way to provide for his family.

So he comes up with a plan.

He forms a gang...

and begins stealing.

When you think of Jesse James and those families,

they have been stripped of everything, they felt,

after the Civil War and they were gonna come

and take what they thought was owed to them.

- Come here, come here. - Let's go.

Here, take this.

Go, go, go!

But the Union Army quickly cracks down.

Jesse.

Cover that up.

How you doing?

What's in the crates?

Food,

various sundries.

Got some sweet corn.

- You boys hungry? - Want some water.

- We don't take orders from northern... - Frank!

We got water.

Fresh out of the creek.

Tastes like shit.

Yeah, well, I guess we're used to it.

Search the house. Take it all.

Yes, sir.

Fed up with the North's presence,

Jesse James is determined to fight back.

Jesse James could not adjust to peacetime.

He was strongly opposed to what was going on in the South

and in fact viewed the army after the end of the war as being oppressive.

As attacks from Confederates like Jesse

escalate around the South,

news travels over 1,000 miles to the east

to the nation's capital.

These just came in.

You're dismissed.

The man who has to deal with the growing unrest

in the South is the same man

who recently claimed victory over the Confederacy...

commanding general of the US Army

Ulysses S. Grant.

When the Civil War began,

Grant was considered by many to be a failure,

a drunk with no future in the military.

But after a series of Union generals

were unable to secure victory for the North,

Abraham Lincoln promoted Grant to lead the US Army,

and he rose to the task.

General Grant is one of the true military geniuses.

He saw the objective and he knew what needed to be done.

With tensions rising in the former Confederacy,

Grant is forced to deal with the South once again.

When Grant took control of the army,

he had to deal with leftover matters from the Civil War.

Grant understood that there was a feeling in the South

that this defeat was something that still might be resisted.

And Grant had to attend to that.

Grant knows he can't let rebels like Jesse James

reignite the war.

So he sends more US troops south to maintain order

and institutes strict martial law.

Just over a year since the end of the Civil War,

it's North versus South again.

With former Confederate soldiers like Jesse James

lashing out against northern authority in the South...

...General Ulysses S. Grant sends armed troops

to enforce order.

During the immediate aftermath of the Civil War,

military government martial law was imposed

and Union soldiers were in occupation of much of the South.

Southerners generally resisted this.

It was, from their perspective, a continuation of the Civil War

in which northerners imposed their will,

imposed their ways on the South.

But the increased military presence

only makes things worse.

Jesse James and other ex-Confederates like him

begin rioting.

With the Civil War on the verge of starting up again,

Grant knows a new strategy is needed to heal the nation.

So he and the US government

look to a plan laid out by the man who led the country

during the Civil War... Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln knew that the key to healing the country

would be to give all Americans the promise

of a new start in the West.

The value of going into uncharted territory,

there's a chance for enterprise and development

and a chance for people to grow and to succeed

in ways they couldn't in the overdeveloped East.

And also, I think, just the excitement

and the challenge of uncharted territory...

that's a little bit of the American way.

From the Missouri River

to the coast of California,